Punk Beijing

What can I say...

This blog wouldn't exist without Punk. I was too young be one in 1976, and certainly too Catholic. Fast forward to 1999 and one of my newest and closest friends (professional troublemaker) Blue Doran sat me down in his Bangkok apartment over bottles of Sangsom and underneath his vintage movie poster collection (Midnight Cowboy and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid) draping the walls, he explained Punk to me from his first hand experience of following the Sex Pistols around as a fifteen year old from Worcester, and my mind was blown. I got the concept, I got the sizzle and I got the history all in one night, from a living witness and nothing was ever the same again. By coincidence my daughter's Aunty was a punk inspired designer in Thailand with the widely loved Scotch-Soda clothing brand.

Perhaps it is fitting then that this designer, often styled ironically in pin curls and pearls, and so involved with the pop cultural desecration and modern rebrand of British heritage, should depart in the same year as the woman whose image she once helped lance with a safety pin.

On one of my returns to the UK I stayed with Rob, my former design lecturer at Uni, and he had a very expensive Vivienne Westwood collection for both himself and his partner. 

She tossed her prezzies out when they separated and Rob mentioned it was about 20 grands worth. That's just the stuff she was given. Back in the 90's she also refused a chance to be a model for one of the Vivienne Westwood collections. Super Croydon girl is Audrey (went to school with Kate Moss), totally grounded and couldn't give a shit about any attention seeking lifestyle. In a way that's about as punk as it gets.

While at Robs we took the opportunity to go and see Vivienne's retrospective at the Victoria & Albert museum and that's when I really got into her work. He also gave me Jane Mulvagh's biography of Vivienne, An Unfashionable Life, to read. It's a really good book and provides a bit more dispassionate granularity than most biographies.

Raised in Derbyshire from working class stock, Ms Westwood established LET IT ROCK with Malcolm 'Svengali' McLaren on the Kings Road. I dare say Tavistock were all over the show, without even letting them know. Nobody wants to talk about that so let's roll on. After leaving the rock (let it rock, black rock, tavistock... quarry men then the rolling stones and G Brethren and so on and so forth).

I can't let it go

Vivienne Westwood did not feel pretty as a child, but while roaming a wood near the family home in Derbyshire she dreamt of becoming a beautiful wood fairy.

“I daydreamed that I would be walking in this wood and I would have this little house under these tree roots. I would have this fantastic dress and just come upon one or two little boys that I knew and they would just really be impressed by this dress. I always had this idea that some day I could make myself better.”

In a way it's Tolkienesque right? 

In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. 

Next thing, we're in Rivendell

Perfect

All around the alleged globe, the British don't quite understand that of course the people are loved, but the empire?

... nah... the international community want to punch the football into the net like Maradona, unless it's filling Kiev's MuthaWEFFer pockets or the EU or the WHO or do I really need to continue?

If you consider yourself British (i'm a space mongrel) I can assure you there's lot's of British historiography around the world (all over the world)

She may have come to fashion designing at the comparatively late age of 33. 

Vivienne as it were.

You will only see two British iconographies from the slums of Rangoon to the Showrooms of Beijing. 

Those are Bentley Motors & Punks

All strata of society around the world know those two and till recently the Queen and the Beatles.

Prove me wrong

Dissolution - CJ Sansom

I've bragged many times. I used to read The Economist, The FT, WSJ, The Guardian and The Observer regularly. I'd smash American CEOs in international hotel bars on United States political history because I had the best teacher, Joe Barbera. 

He used to say, 'have you read this?' and if I said no, he'd immediately become animated and tell me why I had to read say Kissinger (Years of Upheaval) or Caro on LBJ (Master of the Senate).

Then I went off-piste and discovered I knew nothing...

Since then, I've pretty much read only non-fiction, so I was half hearted about Dissolution, but it was the best from a bad bunch, so I pressed on.

CJ Sansom is a great writer. Its clean historical fiction set in the time of Henry VIII but not that Cromwell, the other one. 

I appreciated getting granular on Monastic nomenclature, particularly the obedientiaries.

The end was quite exciting and a bit of a page turner but in the final overview, I couldn't believe that intermittent parts of the plot hung on indiscreet revelations made by the protagonist Matthew Shardlake. 

Cromwell's investigator. 

Not only that but he put people's lives in danger by shooting his mouth off. Anyway, I've finished it now and I'm on Fiona Maddocks - Hildegard of Bingen.

The Fermata - Erotic Fiction

The Fermata is a 1994 erotic novel by Nicholson Baker. It is about a man named Arno Strine who can stop time, and uses this ability to embark on a series of sexual adventures. Like Baker's previous novel Vox, The Fermata was controversial amongst critics yet was also a bestseller - Wikipedia

It wasn't my cup of tea, but it wasn't offensive to my soul. 

Every Light in the House Burnin'

I read this to pass the time while hanging out with television addicts. 

Some had complex needs and other's, including myself, were there to care for them.

I enjoyed Andrea Levy's book Every Light in the House Burnin'

At her best, she writes like Bukowski. 

It struck me as poignant when she died shortly after I finished her book.

Chinese Literacy

Chairman Mao was a prolific reader. It's rumoured he would spend days in bed surrounded by piles of books absorbing a diverse selection ranging from philosophy to politics and religion. If his chosen reading was unavailable he'd plump for anything to hand. One of the observations experienced was that a security guard was reading easily the thickest book I've ever seen a security guard read, anywhere in the world. Over the last couple of weeks, I've noticed there are a number of statues around Beijing celebrating the power of books and reading. The one above is outside the Beijing Books Building and was taken as I walked from Xidan through Tiananmen square to Wanfujing over the weekend. Chinese literacy is one of the highest in Asia at around 90% if the CIA world fact book is to be believed. Speaking of facts, asessments of China were recently downgraded by 40% if you were paying attention to what the U.S. controlled World Bank announced yesterday. Makes me wonder what metrics China would use to measure the U.S.

The smog in Beijing at the moment is rather harsh.